Public security minister says he’s reassured after police meeting on youth crime

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Quebec Public Security Minister François Bonnardel says he’s feeling reassured after meeting with Montreal area police chief Friday following a spate of violent crimes, including firebombings, that, at times, have involved suspects and victims as young as 14.

Organized criminal groups have become more disorganized, Bonnardel told reporters after meeting with the chiefs of the Montreal, Laval and provincial police forces, but he’s confident police have the resources they need to fight those groups.

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“There’s been a complete paradigm shift from what Quebec experienced some 30 years ago during the biker war. Today, with the arrival of street gangs, mainly in Montreal and in Laval, this paradigm shift is, unfortunately, leading to more young people being used by these street gangs to do their dirty work,” he said. “I find it unacceptable to see young people involved in petty crime, which, unfortunately, more often than not, leads to serious crime.”

Unlike during the biker war when the provincial government created a specialized squad — known as the l’escouade Carcajou, or Wolverine Squad — to target biker gangs, Bonnardel said the police chiefs he met with Monday didn’t ask him for more resources, adding the government has already spend hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the Montreal and Laval police services, as well as to increase the training capacity of the province’s police academy, the École nationale de police du Québec, from 650 recruits a year to 1,000.

Police operations and manpower on the ground, as well as the sharing of intelligence and cooperation between provincial and municipal police services, which have had rivalries in the past, are reassuring, he said.

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“It’s disgusting to see 14-year-olds used to do their dirty work, like what we saw in Frampton,” Bonnardel said, referring to reports two 14-year-olds from the Montreal area shot at a Hells Angels club in the Beauce region in late September. One of them was later found brutally killed. “Fighting this is immensely important, but all our forces are on the ground. We’re on the lookout, and the intelligence is stronger.”

The meeting came one day after Montreal police chief Fady Dagher addressed reporters in an effort to reassure the public that authorities are targeting the organized crime groups responsible for violent crime that may be linked to extortion rackets.

Extortion schemes in which restaurants and businesses are shaken down for money in exchange for the safety of their premises are nothing new, Dagher said Thursday. But whereas they used to be mainly the purview of the Mafia and biker gangs, now a variety of street gangs using teenage recruits have been getting involved, “which has increased the uncertainty involved.”

Dagher made a plea to businesses being shaken down and to parents who fear their child might be lured by a criminal element to contact or collaborate with police before it’s too late.

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“If we knock at your door, it’s not because we are there by chance,” he said. “It’s because we have information, we have observed things that lead us to believe your child is heading in a wrong direction. There are too many examples, sad, fatal examples that have happened in Montreal where we have knocked on the door and parents didn’t believe us.”

Bonnardel reiterated that message on Friday, saying police need help from parents and teachers.

“Like Mr. Dagher said yesterday, when we knock at your door, please open the door, we may have information that will save the life of your child,” he said.

Bonnardel said he will be talking with his counterparts from the federal government and other provinces at a coming meeting in Yellowknife about the possibility of increasing sentences for young offenders who commit certain crimes.

Among the incidents that led to Bonnardel’s meeting was the Old Montreal hostel fire that killed a 43-year-old woman and her seven-year-old daughter Oct. 4. Police said Friday they have arrested two people in connection with the blaze. Security footage shows a man breaking into the ground-floor restaurant of the building at 2:30 a.m., shortly before the fire erupted in the building where 25 people were staying.

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Late Tuesday, three males, ages 17, 19 and 20, were arrested after at least 16 shots were fired at a building in Old Montreal owned by Èmile Benamor, a Montreal defence lawyer who owns the building on Notre Dame St. E., where the fatal fire occurred last week. Benamor is also the owner of the Place d’Youville building in Old Montreal, where seven people died in a raging fire in March 2023. That fire is still under investigation.

Asked about whether changes need to be made in order to address the reasons those fires spread so quickly and were so deadly, and not just those who may have set them, Bonnardel said he will be waiting for the results of a coroner’s inquest into the two blazes.

Police said Wednesday they arrested seven teens between the ages of 14 and 17 last week who allegedly belong to a gang based in the city’s St-Leonard borough. Police said they are suspected in numerous violent crimes, including robbery, firearms offences, arson and extortion. The suspects had been squatting in an abandoned commercial property on Jean-Talon St. E. they were using as a hiding place, police said.

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It’s impossible to know what percentage of Montreal businesses are being targeted for extortion, since most cases probably go unreported, police said. Francis Renaud, head of the organized crime unit with the Montreal police, said he had 30 to 40 cases on his desk related to businesses being extorted. Most are in the downtown core, he said. Some of the businesses are involved with organized crime themselves, while others are innocent merchants, Renaud said.

The phenomenon of younger teenagers becoming involved in crime is definitely on the rise, Dagher said, but why it’s happening is difficult to pin down.

“We have theories — perhaps they’re attracted to the money and the glory, to show they succeeded in life by showing they have nice clothes and jewelry and by going out,” he said. “What we really need to look at with social workers is to understand what triggers it. Did it happen at age 10 or 11, who was the person who influenced them to go in this direction? Experience shows it usually comes down to less confidence in themselves, less self-esteem. But we cannot generalize — some young kids who were doing very well in school also went over.”

Older criminal gang members can sense the needs and feed them, promising children as young as 14 they can make as much in one night as they would in six months working at McDonald’s, Renaud said.

“There’s a lot of dreams told to these children — at 14 years old, you’re a child — and they’re falling for it. That’s the problem.”

Police would not give the names of the gangs involved because the publicity serves as a form of glory for them (police have found press clippings mentioning gangs pinned to the walls of clubhouses) and say the gang names are often changed soon afterward.

Police are also in favour of stricter penalties for unlawful gun possession, Dagher said.

rbruemmer@postmedia.com; jserebrin@postmedia.com

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